Raspberry Pi - $35 Linux computer

  • Thread starter Thread starter daz
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purplesky said:
A lot of people bought the pi as it was cheap and for no other reason. Most of them will be played with for an hour or so max before being left to collect dust and never used again. A quick novelty if you will.
There are better options for a media centre for not much more money. The pi will be useful I'm sure for specialist projects, but lets face it, the majority of people are not making custom/specialist pieces of gear.
It's primary role to help teach kids programming is also not a very good proposal. Most kids will not be interested in the first instance, and lets face it, if you're into programming you will have a PC, probably with a Linux partition. PCs are cheap enough for most people today so I doubt the low price point of the pi is any real advantage.
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True, but i think if they can roll these out in school and have a proper learning program they will be great for kids. I wish they had these when I was in school, rather than doing dull lessons on Excel spreadsheets.

Certainly for a regular programmer using the RPi as a programming PC if you can call it that, it will probably be a bit pants, I rather use my PC where the compiling and debugging will be much faster. I think the RPi makes a much more interesting prospect as a controller module for projects. Still if you need/want a media center, file server etc, it can do the job, otherwise I would agree it becomes a bit of a novelty item...
 
I think if only it had a 2nd port, and they were gigabit ethernet (and it could be powered by POE) then it would be a MUCH more useful device, as that would open up lots more use as a firewall/router.

Still, for the first generation of Raspberry Pi, they are doing great and I think it'll just get better in the future.
 
Dist said:
I think if only it had a 2nd port, and they were gigabit ethernet (and it could be powered by POE) then it would be a MUCH more useful device, as that would open up lots more use as a firewall/router.
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Would love a future Pi to be POE-able. Could then use it as a surveillance cam, especially with the camera coming soon. Gigabit ethernet doesn't really bother me now but that and POE on a future generation of Pi would massively open up the range of what they could be used for.

Dist said:
Still, for the first generation of Raspberry Pi, they are doing great and I think it'll just get better in the future.
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Yep. I'll be getting one of the cameras when it's out to see what that is like and what can be done with it.
 
the orignal aim was to get it into schools for kids to play and learn with, i dont think they would go about drastically alter the spec. tho poe would be really nice to have on it
 
The reason for gigabit Ethernet would be that if they were to add a 2nd port on it (and maybe remove the video output as that wouldn't be needed) it would make a reasonable firewall. With 100Mb Ethernet ports it would already be a bottleneck when ISPs like VM are about to offer 120 Mb servers, and even higher in the future.

I don't think that is the sort of thing the makers are going for though, but still would be nice.

While I'm here, I have a couple RaspBMC questions. When using the XBMC android app it has the ability to 'send' text, but this doesn't seem to work in any text input box and it is so slow scrolling from letter to letter, is there any better way to use text input from the app? Also, can anyone recommend a cheap wireless/bluetooth keyboard+touchpad that is known to work with the raspberry pi (i'm not sure if usb bluetooth dongles work with it, or if they consume too much power)?
 
purplesky said:
A lot of people bought the pi as it was cheap and for no other reason. Most of them will be played with for an hour or so max before being left to collect dust and never used again. A quick novelty if you will.
There are better options for a media centre for not much more money. The pi will be useful I'm sure for specialist projects, but lets face it, the majority of people are not making custom/specialist pieces of gear.
It's primary role to help teach kids programming is also not a very good proposal. Most kids will not be interested in the first instance, and lets face it, if you're into programming you will have a PC, probably with a Linux partition. PCs are cheap enough for most people today so I doubt the low price point of the pi is any real advantage.
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What would you suggest as a better media player? I'm really struggling to find anything between the Pi and 'proper' HTPCs at a few hundred quid?

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18423193
 
Got a case and class 10 on order. Raspbmc RC4 should be out soon apparently performance has increased quite a bit.

Really need the case though, set the Pi up on the network so I could drop files onto it without having to plug a USB in and out all the time took about an hour to transfer a 700mb file from the network lol and I don't like touching the device when it's on jic
 
PiKe said:
How would you use HDMI-CEC with Viera Link?

There's no mode button on the TV remote for other devices...

Pana%20X10%20remote%21.jpg
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You need to enable the web browser to get HDMI-CEC to work. From the buglist, this is fixed in RC4. I've tested it with an Anynet+ remote, and whilst not every button worked, enough of them did to actually make the system usable without a keyboard.

Re: Performance Issues / Lack of codecs. The RPi can't currently handle downscaling DTS audio, which is why some 1080p video skips like mad. If you have a device that works with DTS passthrough (or convert / avoid dts audio), you won't have noticed the issue, but its there for the rest of us. There is talk on the RPi forums of the possiblity of a codec pack which will see the downmixing being done on the GPU, as well as enabling other codecs and such. If and when that happens, any issues should instantly be resolved with playback, and similarly one would hope that GUI wouldn't lag so much when playing video.

Personally, I think the device is great as a media player, but the software isn't even out of beta yet. I'm hoping for a final release and a codec pack in order to have it pass the girlfriend/just works test. With regards to that, I might be worth actually letting the RPi folks know theres a lot of us out here which would pay for the the 10$ codec pack, that is if you were willing to pay for it.
 
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My order was due to be sent out this week (95xxx) order number but because the case isn't in stock, it going to delay the whole order :(
 
Has anyone cancelled an order though RS if so how long did it take to get your refund? They cancelled my order by email monday last week yet they have to refund me and are ignoring my emails.
 
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They certainly took my 40 odd quid.

Edit: Opened a dispute with paypal now see if that gets their attention.
 
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I've tried to cancel my RS order as I got fed up of waiting.

They replied back saying they couldn't find me in their database, even though they have also taken money from my account. :confused:


Signed up to Farnell and RS on the same day, received my Pi from Farnell a few months ago, nothing from RS, go figure, they suck. I've ordered another from Farnell.
 
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